So Far, So Good

I replaced both feeders (which were empty) on Wednesday. One of the bees on the porch managed to get under my pants leg and sting me through my sock. Ingrate...  

I replaced the outside feeder Friday and the inside feeder tonight. They are definitely hungry.

I can see the queen cage through the observation window outside - empty. Can't tell inside, but everything seems to be going well. I may not bother pulling the queen cages - the worst they can do is build comb around them, I think.

A few minor observations

The bees seem fine. As it warmed up, both hives starting flying around outside - very active. I have no idea what they're doing, they just seem to be flying around the entrance.  There were lots of them at the feeders. Curiously, there are a number of dead bees in each one. I don't think anything is killing them in there, so I wonder if the workers are treating it as "outside" and using it as a trash can.

I decided to go in at dark and remove the dead ones, but  some were still feeding. I thought they stopped for the night, but it looks like they keep on going - a bunch of little Everready bunnies. The main hive was active as well. I guess it makes sense since the hive is dark all the time - they must not need light to keep working.

The porch feeder is almost empty. I'll try again in the morning to remove the bees and replace the feeder.  It will be colder so maybe they'll be quiet enough.                        

Waiting...

There's always something to worry about when keeping bees,isn't there? They've been here for three days, but I worry that they grew up in warm, sunny Georgia and came here to heavy rain and cold weather. They are huddled together for warmth in both hives, probably too cold to get to the feeders. Should  I close the bottom, which is screened, to keep them warmer but which might reduce circulation and cause dampness problems? I decided to close them this morning because it was 40 degrees but open them later. Should I put the storm window back in the back porch, replacing the screen?

Then there's the queens. Will they be accepted and get out of the container? Because of the observation window I could see the container in the back yard hive and the queen is out. But - the sugar plug is still there. How did she get out and leave it there? Doesn't seem like enough room. The bees did shift; they covered the container before, so they must be adjusting to her presence. I can't see the container on the porch hive. It's still covered by bees.

I worry about the design. Because I have the feeders at the opposite end of the hive from the entrance, the hive space is larger than it probably should be.  Is this too much for them to keep warm? Can they still get to the feeders? There are a number of bars of old comb from the previous hive, but they still leave a lot of space.

The porch hive has a pile of dead bees on the floor. Why haven't they been removed - is it because it's too cold for them to get to work? And, are they the new bees or are the old bees that were still in the old comb and have been removed?

On the plus side, the design seems good. The observation windows are great. They are easy and non-invasive. The back yard queen is out. Lots of bees are alive, though huddled together. They found the feeders, particularly on the porch.

Back to waiting. At least three weeks before the first new bees, if the queens are successful. Looking occasionally (daily?) for signs of comb building, cleanup and foraging. Six weeks to see if the number of bees is growing and ready to live without feeding.

Good luck to those of you with new (or old bees).

Installation (read previous post first)

It took 35 minutes to get home. I figured the back yard install would be easy, since I had done it before, but the porch would be the challenge. I did the back yard first. I had already put a sugar water feeder in its little stall. Sprayed the bees with sugar water - Jim Bobb says you can't overspray them as far as he knows. Got the queen out and she was alive, so far so good. This time, I melted some wax on the back of the queen box, after brushing off her outside entourage. It seemed to stick on the side of the hive ok. I thought this would be better than the duct tape I used last year.

Temperature was in the 70's so the bees were very active. I am reusing comb from the last hive so I moved it out of the way and removed some empty bars and dumped the bees in. I did manage to get the bars arranged properly without squooshing too many of them. Left the package on the ground in front of the hive and moved away - they really were all over the place, including around my head and landing on me occasionally.

Now it was time for the porch hive. First, I had to install the queen. I wasn't sure about the wax method, so I cut a little piece of wood and screwed it into the side of the hive horizontally. Then, I got her out of the package and used the wax. So far, so good (she was also alive).  I did remember to remove the right cork for both queens, and decided not to used Jim Bobb's technique. He leaves both corks in and goes in 4 days later to remove the cork that lets her out right away. He does this because he doesn't trust the bees to eat through the sugar plug and also because he doesn't mind going into the hive.

The biggest problem I could see was how to get the bees out of the porch after dumping them. I took out one storm window to give them an exit.  After the sugar water spray and thumping the box, I dumpted them. The package is the same size as the top bars so I just put the package in place upside down. However, they didn't seem in a rush to exit, so I had to find a place to put the package near the entrance and let them find their way. I meant to have a solution, but didn't. What I finally did was pretty hokey, but it worked.  A 20 ft extension ladder comes to just under the window sill. Since the package wasn't the right size to just sit on the top rungs, I wedged it under the sill - see photo. This worked.

Meanwhile, some of the bees were having trouble finding their way out of the porch. They persisted in trying to get out of the other storm windows. I guess that individually they're not that bright. I left this arrangement alone so the bees could get organized.

Here are some answers to questions I had:

• They found the feeders pretty quickly; I didn't know if they would. I'll watch to see if they try to seal the sliding plastic doors I have. They may if they think this is part of the hive.
• The packages were empty in an hour or so.
• The porch bees figured out the entrance pretty quickly although you could see that they examined them very closely - 5 in. tubes of PVC.
• The bees settled down in the hive towards night time. That left the dummies on the porch hanging around the storm windows. I finally put a screen in so the window wasn't totally open.
• When night came, the dummies settled quietly. I realized that I could brush them into a container and dump them in the hive. They're almost all gone from the porch. The cold damp weather today also helped because I could get most of the rest in day time. There were still bees at the feeder, though, so it looks like that idea will work.
• I did get stung twice - very minor.
• The observation window is a wonderful thing. I could see that today the bees were huddled together on the old comb keeping warm. I need to use a flashlight to see anything.
• Now the wait begins. Will the queens get out of the boxes, be accepted and start laying?  Bees will be dying and have to be replaced. It will be at least 3 weeks before any new ones appear. 6 weeks is the waiting period to see if the hives are functioning.           

I don't have any other photos for now.  There wasn't anything else to see that was really different from previous photos.                           

The Bees Are Here!

•  April 21 finally arrived. I went to Worcester Honey Farms in Montgomery County to pick up two packages. It's just off route 73 near the Peter Wentz Farmstead. More than 100 packages were being picked up.
• These are various shots of the property, mostly of Jim Bobb (yes, his real name, but Bobb is his surname) demonstrating how to install a package.
• This is where I got my package last year.  
• There are a lot of beehives on the property.
• The bees, including the queens, are from Georgia. Jim Bobb picked them up on Thursday. Apparently, he helps making the packages. They had so many bees that the packages have more bees than usual - they were dumping them just to keep the hives from swarming.
• Most of the customers are in their first or second year of beekeeping.
• The demo was mostly familiar info and dealt more with Langstroth hives, so I didn't get much out of it, except that Jim kept pointing out problems that could occur that I didn't know about.
• Helene was there picking up her first package.  

The new bees arrive on the 21st - less than two weeks. They will have missed the enormous amount of pollen that's been around for weeks, but that can't be helped. I finished the cover for the insider hive and painted it what was meant to be a honey color. It is, kind of.

Meanwhile, recent bee news reports a Harvard study on CCD. This mystery appeared in 2005/6, right after use began of neonicotinoids on corn. This is an insecticide that is absorbed by the seed and permeates the plant for its lifetime. The study exposed bee colonies to a small dose of imadacloprid (one of the neonicotinoids) and also had control colonies which were not exposed. After 23 weeks, 15 of the 16 exposed colonies had CCD. All 5 of the control colonies were healthy. Here's a link to the article: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0405-hance_colonycollapse_pesticides.html?utm_campaign=General+news&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_source=SNS.analytics

The really inisidious suggestion is that imadacloprid gets in the bees from high fructose corn syrup, that cheap sweetener of choice for the food industry. What does it do to us?

In colonies with CCD, the bees just disappear, as apposed to most problems where you have piles of dead bees in or around the hive. Apparently, this poison affects the bees' homing instincts so that they can't find their way back to the hive. Most testing mechanisms look for short term effects resulting in dead bees, so they wouldn't discover these results.

The results are convincing, but not conclusive. Scientists always try to reproduce results to confirm or deny the original findings. Personally, I think it is one more instance of big agriculture damaging us while thinking that they are on a noble mission to feed the world.  Grow your own and think organic.